1.6.2-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club chapter 2: of honesty, single standards, and mutual disrespect I am apparently utter, utter rubbish at staying on top of things. This is not, in fact, surprising, as anyone who has ever waited for me to finish a fic should know. I do apologize. Anyway, this is a Javert chapter, so my standard ‘I am utterly incapable of being unbiased about Javert’ disclaimer applies. That said, let’s do this. So it’s been six weeks since Fantine was arrested. Both Valjean and Javert are still bitter about their fight and both find it appropriate to be chilly towards each other. Valjean somewhat pettily refuses to acknowledge Javert right away and forces him to stand there awkwardly for a bit. Hugo takes advantage of this to give us a quick picture of Javert, noting that he is clearly troubled and yet calm of expression. It actually paints quite a good picture of resignation, of a man who knows he has done wrong and who has accepted that and made his peace with the consequences. Also I love the description of him as a man who has never been gentle and has always been patient. When Valjean finally deigns to acknowledge him, Javert doesn’t beat around the bush and pretty much immediately tells Valjean to fire him. Because that’s the thing about Javert: he holds others to impossibly strict standards, but he holds himself to those exact same ones and punishes himself just as he would anyone else guilty of his crimes. “Vous direz, j’aurais pu donner ma démission, mais cela ne suffit pas. Donner sa démission, c’est honorable. J’ai failli, je dois être puni. Il faut que je sois chassé.” (You will say, I could have tendered my resignation, bu that is enough. Tendering ones resignation, that’s honorable. I have failed, I must be punished. I must be sacked.) He’ll come out and talk about his standards more later but I like this bit as an explanation of his worldview. It’s coldly logical and strict. He has done wrong therefore he must be punished. There is no room in there for pity or understanding or exceptions. He is as hard on himself as he was on Fantine. So Javert confesses his heinous misdeed and Valjean once again visibly reacts to the prospect of being thought a convict. Good thing Javert’s got his eyes closed. And then Valjean pretends not to recognize his own name, which I suppose is as good a tactic as any for getting suspicion away from you. Javert explains that this Jean Valjean fellow robbed the Bishop and a child but fails to mention that he also broke parole, which I thought was his main crime actually. Apparently I was wrong about that. Then Javert apologizes for accusing the mayor and says that it was a crazy thing to do and the mayor says, “I’m glad you realize that” and I am torn between snickering and telling him to be nice. So apparently Jean Valjean has been found, only he’s not called Jean Valjean anymore. And I must say, the evidence against this guy is quite compelling. Three fellow prisoners recognized him, including Brevet who has actually been mentioned before and who I’d forgotten about completely. Going back through my early annotations I found a note by his name the first time going, ‘will this be at all relevant later?’ and sure enough it now is. A+ Hugo. Javert asks the mayor for his forgiveness for having suspected him of being the convict, and the mayor refuses to grant it. Really they’re both behaving badly at each other and have been for quite some time. It’s just a series of small, almost petty slights that sometimes burst into something bigger. Which would be fine, except that they both claim to be above such things, particularly Valjean who is the main offender in this scene. Particularly in the next bit where he asks Javert for more details about what the accused says and then, after being provided with said details, tells him to shut up because he doesn’t give a fuck. Skip forward and we get a more concrete examination of Javert’s principles and ideals, as laid out by Javert himself. They’re pretty much what we would expect from him, especially this part: “J’ai souvent été sévère dans ma vie. Pour les autres. C’était juste. Je faisais bien. Maintenant, si je n’étais pas sévère pour moi, tout ce que j’ai fait de juste deviendrait injuste.” (I have often been stern in my life. Against others. It was just. I did well. Now, if I am not stern against myself, all that I did justly would become unjust.) Whether or not you think his philosophy is right, at least it’s deeply, achingly consistent. Also this bit made me laugh: “Monsieur le maire, je ne souhaite pas que vous me traitiez avec bonté, votre bonté m’a fait faire assez de mauvais sang quand elle était pour les autres.” (M. mayor, I do not wish for you to treat me with kindness, your kindness is bad enough when it is directed towards others.) Which, okay, might be a bit much, but you couple it with this “c’est bien facile d’être bon, le malaisé c’est d’être juste.” (it’s easy enough to be good; the difficulty is in being just) and you get not only his rigid philosophy but also his never before spoken contempt for Valjean and his methods. They’re faced with the same set of problems but each chooses to focus on a different one (Valjean on unhappiness, Javert on lawlessness) and the choose extremely different methods. And the rest of the chapter is basically restating all those same themes and the second half of this is already fairly incoherent, so I’m just going to stop here. Commentary Sarah1281 I think that Javert did not mention that Valjean broke parole because he did not have to mention it. He said that Valjean was a convict and that he had disappeared. Him being a convict meant that he would be on parole and the fact that he disappeared means he must have broken parole. But breaking parole was never going to be as big of a deal as actually commiting more crimes since parole is nominally about keeping an eye on ex-cons and making sure they don’t go out and commit more crimes. Valjean was rather rude in the beginning but I think that, while his behavior might be objectively called rude later on, I don’t think it can be considered a deliberate slight petty or otherwise. He is in pure freak-out mode the minute he hears the words ‘Jean Valjean.’ He needs to get all the information he can while not giving away the fact that Javert totally had it right the first time. He does not respond to Javert’s “I beg your pardon” because he is beyond worrying about social niceties and he has to know more about this “real Jean Valjean.” Once he’s gotten everything he can out of Javert he can’t make Javert wonder at his curious interest in some random convict Javert madly thought was him and so he (badly) feigns disinterest. He forgets about Javert as a person and sees him as more a fountain of exposition. The minute he is reminded that Javert is tryinig to be disgraced and punished for denouncing Madeleine, he quickly corrects him and insists that he is a good person who deserves to be respected and even promoted. He even offers him his hand. He was being petty earlier about the matter of Fantine and laughed at the ridiculousness of Javert writing all the way to Paris to denounce himfor such a minor matter that Valjean was even in the right of legally but the minute he found out that “Jean Valjean” had been captured he didn’t have any room to continue being petty.